Doubts about the diagnosis and treatment of syphilis in pregnancy among primary care professionals in a telehealth service

Renata Rosa de Carvalho; Fabiana Carvalho; Elise Botteselle de Oliveira; Rodolfo Souza da Silva; Dimitris Varvaki Rados; Rita Mattiello; Marcelo Rodrigues Gonçalves; Roberto Nunes Umpierre; Camila Giugliani

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0306192

Doubts about the diagnosis and treatment of syphilis in pregnancy among primary care professionals in a telehealth service

PLoS One. 2024 Jun 28;19(6):e0306192. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0306192. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Renata Rosa de Carvalho^{1

2}, Fabiana Carvalho^{1

2}, Elise Botteselle de Oliveira¹, Rodolfo Souza da Silva¹, Dimitris Varvaki Rados¹, Rita Mattiello^{1

2

3}, Marcelo Rodrigues Gonçalves^{1

2

3}, Roberto Nunes Umpierre^{1

3}, Camila Giugliani^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Núcleo de Telessaúde do Rio Grande do Sul (TelessaúdeRS-UFRGS), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
² Post Graduate Studies Program in Epidemiology, School of Medicine, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
³ Social Medicine Department, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Abstract

This cross-sectional study aims to describe doubts regarding the diagnosis and treatment of syphilis in pregnancy among primary care professionals in a telehealth service. All teleconsultations (TCs) offered through TelessaúdeRS-UFRGS to primary health care (PHC) services in the state of Rio Grande do Sul between 2018 and 2021 involving syphilis in pregnancy were included. A total of 356 (TCs) were analyzed. The main doubts about syphilis during pregnancy raised by primary care professionals were related to the need for retreatment (35%), diagnostic definition (23%) and initial treatment (16%). In addition, 95% of TCs were suitable for diagnosing and treating syphilis based on the 2020 Brazilian Ministry of Health guideline. This study suggests that TCs can identify failures in the diagnosis and treatment of public health problems and support decision making in PHC involving syphilis in pregnancy.

Copyright: © 2024 de Carvalho et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

MeSH terms

Adult
Brazil / epidemiology
Cross-Sectional Studies
Female
Health Personnel
Humans
Pregnancy
Pregnancy Complications, Infectious* / diagnosis
Pregnancy Complications, Infectious* / drug therapy
Primary Health Care*
Syphilis* / diagnosis
Syphilis* / drug therapy
Telemedicine*

Grants and funding

This research was supported by grants and material support from the following Brazilian agencies: Committee for the Development of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Postgraduate Program in Epidemiology at the School of Medicine of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Postgraduate Research Group at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre - FIPE HCPA. TelessaúdeRS-UFRGS is funded by multiple sources, including Brazilian Ministry of Health, and Rio Grande do Sul state health agency. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.